


On Friendships and Minions

by sixappleseeds



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 23:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2485739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixappleseeds/pseuds/sixappleseeds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Detective story. Second person present tense. A lot of swearing. A lot of loyalty. Grief. Noah.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Friendships and Minions

  
“Kavinsky? You want to know how we met that fucker? Ha.”  The boy takes another shot, slams his glass down so hard the table rattles. The other one follows suit.  
  
You’re only looking for the story, but to find the story you had to find the pack. His minions. They hadn’t come back, after that night in July. None of them had come back.  
  
Patiently you repeat your question. You pretend you’ve got all the time in the world. Maybe they do too.  For several moments you stare at one another.  
  
The music in here, the lights, the bodies, and the heavy smells of sweat and factory-fresh fragrances, makes it hard to focus. If you’d let yourself, you’d shudder and gasp and disappear, but instead you stare, first at one boy and then the other. Their pupils are dilated wide, black black black. You’re pretty sure they can’t  see your eyes.  
  
The other one sighs mightily. “He liked my ride,” he shouts to you over the music.  
  
“Jiang. Motherfucker said he’d shoot out your windows if you beat him again.”  
  
Jiang smiles. You feel the hair rise on the back of your neck. “Like I said.” He lifts a hand, flashes his incisors at you. “I showed him how to race. He showed me how to drink.” He downs another shot himself. There are four more full glasses remaining. You hope they won’t offer you any.  
  
“You didn’t show him shit,” the first boy snarls. “That piece of shit never could drive right. Lynch beat him every fucking time.”  
  
“Except the last time.”  
  
“Well, yeah. Except the last time.”  
  
There’s a few minutes of relative silence as the boys stare at the table while the music pounds around them. You remember the last time. You wish you didn’t.  
  
“Remember that night in Atlantic City?” the first boy says.  
  
“The time you and him and Proko had a giant Russian love fest with those girls from the casino? And me and Swan had to drag you out before your dad caught us? Yeah, tell me about that night.”  
  
“How many times I have to tell you I’m fucking Danish? Cunt. I meant after that. The sunrise part.”  
  
Jiang sits back. He raises a brow at you, and it occurs to you that whatever he’s on, he’s far more lucid than you’d originally thought.  
  
“Yeah, Skov,” he says finally. “Yeah, that was pretty good.”  
  
Skov snorts suddenly. “Except he and asswipe kept thinking the seagulls were gonna eat them, remember?”  
  
“No, no, Proko only thought that coz K. told him they were fucking monsters and he was already tripping balls. K. was scared shitless though.”  
  
“What the fuck was he on that night?”  
  
“Nothing I’d ever touch.”  
  
“That fucker,” Skov sighs, though it sounds like an endearment. They lapse into silence again. Red strobe lights flash across Jiang’s face. It looks like blood.  
  
You blink, and ask Skov once more how he met Kavinksy. He leers at you over the rim of his next shot glass. “School,” he says. “He came in halfway through the year like he owned the place, which he didn’t. I did. I should’ve had the shit kicked out of him, but you know, he had this...”  
  
He waves a hand vaguely. You can practically see the gears in his head turning. That, and Jiang punching his shoulder seems to shake something loose. Jiang mutters at him, leaning close.  
  
“ _Charisma_ ,” Skov says then, above the music. “Yeah. That. It takes a special set of balls to walk around Aglionby the way he did. So we made a deal. I knew how to penetrate the local market, if you will. He told me where I could, ah, penetrate other things.”    
  
His smile is disgusting.  
  
“Here’s to fucking Catholic schools,” Jiang says, raising his glass.  
  
Skov clinks it with his own. “Fucking, right.”  
  
You have to leave. Between the throbbing bass and their red, strobe-lit smiles, you have to leave. You thank both of them, which makes Jiang bare his teeth and Skov laugh so hard he chokes, and you stand.  You hear one more exchange, as you depart the way you always do.  
  
“Wait, where’d he go?”  
  
“Creepy fucker. Disappeared. I’m not shitfaced enough for this.”  
  
“Another round?”  
  
“God yes.”  
  
.  
  
Swan’s harder to track down. You finally find him at a smelly dive in Richmond.  You recognize the Golf in the parking lot, hone in on that little white car with its single rude bumper sticker, offer to buy him a drink.  
  
“I made the mistake of calling him Joseph,” Swan replies, after he finishes laughing at your question. Across the bar, a pair of enormous men play pool under swinging green lights, while several decidedly less-enormous women drift nearby.  
  
“I heard from Skov he could get me an ID. I said, ‘Hey Joseph.’” Swan tilts his head like he’s calling to one of the pool players, grins, takes a swig of his beer. “Little do I know his dear old dad was the only one who called him that. He broke my nose, the cocksucker. ‘Course I broke his right back. Guess you could say that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.”  
  
Why would you follow a boy like Kavinsky? Was this a loose confederation of drugs and convenience, or something more? Was any of it even real? This is the story you’re trying to find. You’re trying to find out if it’s true.  
  
Swan appears lost in reverie. “Shit, that last spring? I don’t even know if we went to class. I mean, we had to’ve, but I can’t remember any of it.  
  
“What do I remember, god damn. Atlantic City. I thought he was going to die that weekend. He scored these free rooms, penthouse suite fuck yeah, but it’s not like he told us it was his dad’s. Probably wouldn’t’ve trashed it up then. But damn those girls were hot. Had to drag ‘em off of him.” He takes another pull of his beer, throws his head back. The column of his throat is long and bruised.  
  
“We all went down to the water to cool off,” Swan continues, staring at the ceiling. “Watch the sunrise, you know, dumb shit, but he and Proko were high as a fucking kite and kept trying to eat the seagulls or something. He dove straight into the ocean to go after ‘em. I never laughed so hard in my life.”  
  
He lowers his head again, gazes at the scarred table. “He’d get such a kick out of racing, too. Jiang may’ve had the skills, when he wasn’t drunk out of his mind, but Mr. Joey-K. had the, I don’t know, the _passion_ for it.”  
  
He smirks, still to himself. “Haven’t said that name in a while. Pissed him the fuck off. ‘Whadya think I am, some kinda third rate white rapper?’ Tried to beat the shit out of me the first time I said it, Proko and Skov pulled him off. Bet his mom never got the bloodstains out of the carpet. Poor, worthless bitch. I think he drugged her.”  
  
He takes another drink. He’s become so lost in his memories you wonder if you’ve disappeared entirely. “Fucking Lynch, though,” he adds. “Talk about a cocksucker, shit. K. hated him. I have no idea what happened there, but it’s like we lost him one weekend, and by the next weekend we’re putting him in the fucking ground. I ever see Lynch again I will personally kill him for that alone. God.”  
  
He fixes you with a stare. There’s a kind of desperation in his eyes, or exhaustion, or grief. “K. and Proko, Jiang and Skov, they were all fucking crazy, and I don’t think there was a day we didn’t try something illegal, but damn. We had some good times, you know? We had some good times.”  
  
.  
  
You never thought of yourself as a detective. On your better days you’re one of the bigger mysteries around here; solving puzzles has never been your strong suit. But you have begun, lately, to think of yourself as a friend. And one of the components of friendship, you’ve realized, is sometimes figuring out where the truth is for a friend who can’t see it anymore.  
  
So you track down his pack of dogs, and you visit that penthouse in Atlantic City, and you stand by the ocean at dawn. You skulk around parking lots and behind strip malls, peer into the basements of McMansions and around bathroom stall doors. It’s not easy, and it takes longer than you’d like, detective work being harder than you’d first imagined. You keep needing to rest. But it’s important, finding this story is important, and it has to be true, and it has to be as complete as possible, before you can finally pull it all together.  
  
.  
  
Finally, you’re nearly done. The last part is the audience, someone to listen. One particular someone.  
  
You find him in the church. It’s a nice place, this church. For all the weekly doses of guilt its congregants receive, the building’s energy remains strong and generally benevolent. Welcoming, and safe. No wonder people keep coming back.  
  
You doubt he feels any of this, though. He’s too wrapped up in his own guilt to see much of anything at all.  
  
The bench doesn’t make a sound as you settle in beside him. The sanctuary is empty but for the two of you. No one but the deeply shamed and horrified require church on a Thursday morning.  
  
“What do you want?” he growls.  
  
You snake an arm around his shoulders, pull yourself towards him so your head bumps against his.  “Jesus, you’re cold,” he says.  
  
“I know.” There’s nothing you can do about it.  
  
After a few moments, however, he relaxes, slumping so you bring your other arm around to catch him. He threads his own arm around your ribs, squeezes, hangs on. As far as embraces go, this one’s pretty awkward -- church pews were not designed for hugging on -- but you manage. It’s the thought that counts. It’s the feel of his heartbeat against your shoulder, and his tears on your neck.  
  
“Why do I feel this way?” he whispers hoarsely.  
  
You understand. What he is really saying is, _How can the death of one so despicable as Joseph Kavinsky hurt the same way as the death of one so beloved as my father?_ Grief is a terrible, stupid monster, and a mystery you will never even attempt to solve. Instead you hug him tighter. Your friend.  
  
“He wasn’t anything,” he continues, voice wretched. “He didn’t matter.”  
  
This you can answer. This you can deny.  This is the point of your quest, right here. Softly you murmur the story of Joseph Kavinsky, crazy-ass fucker, thief, ringleader, despicable friend. It’s not a nice story. It’s not a story to inspire the masses. It will not be made into a bestselling book. It is probably better left forgotten. But it is, undeniably, the story of someone who mattered, at least to those around him.  
  
“They miss him too,” you finish. “He was theirs, just as much as they were his. They miss him too.”   
  
His breathing has steadied, though he still hangs onto you. You know him: it’s not finding out he’s not alone in his feelings that will matter, it’s finding out that the story he remembers is true. Corroborative evidence gathered from a dozen dirty corners and sneering mouths: _This happened_.  
  
It shouldn’t make it hurt less, but he sighs hugely, wipes his eyes, and finally looks at you.  His gaze, his softening grip around your waist, the way he nudges your shoulder, confirm what you’d long wondered: You’re the only one who bothered to see how deeply his grief goes. Maybe it comes from being dead already, or from being, when you were alive, a little despicable yourself. But you understand.  
  
“Thanks,” he murmurs at last. The barest suggestion of a smile tips the corner of his mouth.  
  
You feel yourself fading. You need to rest, maybe for a while. Being a friend is hard work. But you smile, more than he does, so he can see it as you go. “It’s okay,” you say. “It’ll be okay.”  
  
“Yeah,” he says. And finally, finally, he looks like he believes you.  
  



End file.
